Area Newspaper Ends Its Mass Genocide of Trees

The Onion is halting its print version in Chicago and its two other remaining markets with its Dec. 12 issue. The newsweekly was 25 years old and is survived by its website and a new creative service for advertisers. The satiric newspaper, available at its peak in 17 markets, is now given away in just three cities: Chicago, Milwaukee and Providence, R.I. ...

Over the past several years the company has been disappearing from newsstands steadily as advertising shrank. Its most-recent edition in Chicago, for instance, was just 16 pages and included only two full-page ads, both for Camel cigarettes. ... Those last print pacts will end now as the company concentrates on creating its own brand of satirical content, including video, for the web and for new advertising and corporate clients it has been attracting.

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Newsprint is newsprint, satiric or otherwise, so chances are good that even if you're in the Windy City you've been getting your daily dose of satire over the Web anyway. Still, the shift from a printed product to an online one has clearly had an impact on the paper-turned-website's particular brand of humor. Whether that's a good thing or not is still up for debate.

(h/t @emmaroller for the "Mass Genocide" headline, and @hollyloo for the "The Onion Chops Print Edition; Area Man Weeps" promo line—both of which were far funnier than anything I managed to come up with on my own. If you can top either, let me know at @JoshVoorhees.)